Dave Walsh

Dave Walsh has been covering MMA and Kickboxing since 2007 before changing his focus solely to Kickboxing in 2009, launching what was the only English-language site dedicated to giving Kickboxing similar coverage to what MMA receives. He was the co-founder of HeadKickLegend and now LiverKick. He resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he works as a writer of all trades.

His second novel, Terminus Cycle, is available now via Kindle and Paperback.

SuperKombat returned this weekend with their WGP IV event in Constanta, Romania. The event saw Andrei Stoica make short work of the outmatched Fred Sikking in the first round with a crushing left hook. The co-main event saw the return of Raul Catinas with a TKO victory over Viktor Bugotzki. Bogdan Stoica scored a split decision over Fabio Kwasi that many fans are unhappy about, the same with Alex Filip's extension round decision over Atakan Arslan.

Legendary Golden Glory trainer and GLORY matchmaker Cor Hemmers is a guy that knows kickboxing. That much we all know. He's in Las Vegas now preparing for GLORY 23, featuring the GLORY Welterweight Championship up for grabs between Nieky Holzken and Raymond Daniels. The guys behind Floyd Mayweather's YouTube channel caught up with Cor to talk about Saki, Spong and GLORY 23.

Cor, as always, has a lot of interesting things to say. He sees a lot in Xavier Vigney, which is interesting and seemingly upsetting a lot of fans. What do you think?

Originally slated to be Giorgio Petrosyan vs. Yodsanklai Fairtex on August 28th in China for Hero Legends that fight will no longer take place. Fairtex's camp has been telling people for a while now that it wouldn't happen thanks to an injury and it looks official now. Instead, Petrosyan will be fighting China's own Xu Yan. Xu Yan is one of China's most popular and decorated fighters and the current Hero Legends 70kg champion.

Xu Yan is one of the biggest stars of the promotion and a fight against Petrosyan should be a huge deal in China considering Petrosyan's immaculate reputation as one of the best fighters in the world and one of the greatest of all time. This will be an interesting bout for sure and we are still holding out hope that we see Yodsanklai vs. Petrosyan in the near future.

After Gokhan Saki's talk about why things didn't work out with GLORY that included trashing GLORY's Light Heavyweight division on the way out as no-names that he'd destroy easily we move on and a new champion will be crowned at Bellator's Dynamite event on September 19th on Spike TV. The Spike/GLORY co-branded event is set to have at least three huge kickboxing fights, one of which will probably involve Paul Daley.

The feature attraction, though, will be for the vacant GLORY Light Heavyweight Championship between Zakk "The African Warrior" Mwekassa and Saulo "Cassius Clay" Cavalari. This is a huge rematch from GLORY 18 where Saulo Cavalari ended the storybook rise of Zack Mwekassa with a vicious headkick knockout in the third round. Both men will be fresh this time around and the biggest prize in the game will be on the line so I expect heightened levels of violence from these two.

Of course, what is interesting is that Zack Mwekassa seems to have taken Saki's comments personally and is going off on him via Twitter right now.

@ZackMwekassa The only thing you wil KNOCK..is on doors begging for some change after i end your career, you know..the one you dont have

This Friday evening live on AXS TV we'll see the triumphant return of Lion Fight with Lion Fight 23. This is without a doubt one of the more stacked Lion Fight cards in quite a while featuring an amazing main event between Malaipet and Liam Harrison and the co-main event featuring Tiffany Van Soest against Martyne Krol for the vacant Women's Featherweight Championship. The rest of the card delivers as well with Kevin Ross vs. Rungrat Sasiprapa, Victor Saravia against Stan Mancebo, GLORY vet Mike Lemaire against Andrew Kapel and perhaps the best fight on the show, Romie Adanza vs. Andy Howson.

On August 1st SuperKombat will be presenting one of their biggest cards of the year with the SuperKombat WGP IV. The event is headlined by Andrei Stoica vs. Fred Sikking for the SuperKombat Super Cruiserweight Championship. Some of the other big fights are Raul Catinas vs. Viktor Bugotzki, Bogdan Stoica vs. Fabio Kwasi and Atakan Arslan vs. Alex Filip (might be the best fight on the card).

Romanian fans are very excited about the return of Raul Catinas who will hopefully deliver the goods for them.

It didn't take long for Gokhan Saki to want to share with the world his side of the contract dispute that has been ongoing with GLORY for the better part of a year and a half now. Earlier this week GLORY announced that the GLORY Light Heavyweight Championship was vacated due to Saki not defending it for well over a year, with them even extending that period to attempt to work out a deal between the two sides. They were unable to come to terms, which from what we've heard has mostly been about money.

Saki was making in the range of $200,000 per fight before and GLORY simply didn't see the value in such a contract considering how their other stars are compensated. This isn't boxing and it isn't top level UFC, sadly. The money just isn't there to justify exorbitant contracts. Early on in GLORY many stars were signed to bloated contracts which simply don't reflect the current market for kickboxing. For Saki there is interest from GFC who is willing to pay him and has proven that they are willing to pay for name stars, as seen by Badr Hari's working agreement with them.

Saki released a statement through kickboxing blog Kickboxing Planet early this morning that attempts to explain his side of the story. What's clear is that Saki is very, very upset over this, but the statement itself is, well, a bit rough.

Bellator fans, the people in the USA are not going to see top quality kickboxing and this is bad for the sport. When you win the belt on Sept. 19 you can keep the price money but I expect the winner to hand the belt over to me and acknowledge that he didn’t beat the best. I mostly don’t talk like this and maybe there are a lot of emotions right now. But now that I offended anyone, I did that on purpose and I’m not sorry about it.

During this rant he describes his social media following as a point of value of him over the competition within the division, going as far as to make claims that the rest of the division are nobodies compared to him. This statement is... not a good look for a fighter in the public eye and chances are if there was an open dialogue between GLORY and Saki's camp that dialogue has most likely been shut down.

It's easy to sympathize with Gokhan Saki as he is without a doubt one of the best fighters in the world and has worked extremely hard to reach that level. Before the market imploded he was without a doubt one of the more valuable stars. Hopefully he is able to make the money that he believes that he deserves and will continue fighting for his fans across the world.

This past weekend saw a lot of action, one of which was the triumphant return of Brazil's WGP Kickboxing with WGP 25: Cesar Almeida vs. Alex Pereira III. Pereira was ultimately victorious in this third showdown, once again proving that he's one of the elite of the elite in his weight class. The tournament finals was Bruno Gazani defeat K-1 veteran Wallace Lopes via TKO in the third round.

Last night the Top King TK4 tournament held its big finals for their 154lbs championship. It was a title that many fans felt was a lock for Buakaw Banchamek, but considering the names involved with it there didn't seem to be a clear route for Buakaw to win the whole thing. After Marat Grigorian was forced to pull out we ended up with Buakaw Banchamek vs. Kyahal Dzhaniev and Reece McAllister vs. Dmytro Konstantyov. The visual of the night was a bloody mess of Buakaw losing to Dzhaniev via decision, which of course will be the story of the show to many who saw Banchamek sweeping the whole thing.

The big story should instead be Reece McAllister proving himself once again as one of the best talents in the world. Reece is a tough fighter who has proven himself time and time again who will walk away deserving the Top King 154lbs championship. I'm saying this because McAllister didn't have to fight a second fight. Dzhaniev might've defeated Banchamek but he was too banged up to continue competing, so McAllister was awarded the championship. Weird, right?

Pakorn P.K. Seanchai Muaythai Gym (R3 - Decision) Varats Dzmitry

Rungravee Sasiprapa (R3 - Dec.) Wei Ning Hui

Matt Embree (R1 - TKO) Sittisak Petchphayathai

Thongchai Sitsongpeenong (Rx - TKO) Colin Law

Semi-Finals: Reece Mcallister (R3 - Dec.) Dmytro Konstantynov

Semi-Finals: Khayal Dzhaniev (R3 - Dec.) Buakaw Banchamek

Top King World Series Tournament Final: Reece McAllister (Forfeit) Khayal Dzhaniev

There is video of Buakaw/Dzhaniev floating around. Here it is while it lasts.